The Death of David Kelly

[John Simkin]

In this article the author shows the links between the death of David Kelly, Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson and Haliburton:

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-plamegate.html

1. Plame worked for a CIA unit tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction and the A.Q. Khan network, which sold nuclear secrets and materials to "rogue" nations.

2. Cheney knew all about Khan in 1989 and did nothing to stop him.

3. Cheney's company, Haliburton, received a hefty fine in 1995 for selling dual-use nuclear equipment to Libya, then considered the most roguish of rogue nations. This scam would have brought Haliburton into close contact with the Khan network.

4. A Khan associate named B.S.A. Tahir, based in Dubai, was helping to supply centrifuge equipment to Libya. (Dubai front companies are used to ship American goods to "forbidden" countries.) Tahir works for a business concern called the Scomi Group. Scomi links up with Haliburton via a German concern called Cognis. The exact nature of these linkages are complex. (If you really must know all the details, go here and re-read the middle section until your eyes explode.)

5. David Kelly, the British scientist who acted as a weapons inspector in Iraq, warned of "dark actors" and predicted that he would 'probably be found dead in the woods.' On July 17, 2003, that is precisely what happened. Many people believe that he was murdered.

6. Valerie Plame was outed just a few days before Kelly died or (more likely) was killed.

7. Journalist Judith Miller of the New York Times was used by the OVP to spread disinformation. Judith Miller was also close to Kelly; she had used him as a source for an earlier book on germ warfare.

8. When the A.Q. Khan nuclear network was revealed to the public, Khan received no punishment from the Pakistani government -- and the White House did not protest.

[Sid Walker]

In this article the author shows the links between the death of David Kelly, Valerie Plame, Joseph Wilson and Haliburton:

I'd be inclined to say 'links' - not the links.

As it's my day to obsess about the BBC and its appalling betrayal of public trust to investigate the events of the day without fear or favour, a brief word about the BBCs treatment of the Hutton Inquiry.

I happened to be in Britain at the time.

Not ONCE did I hear or see ANY questioning of the official story of the Kelly death.

By that time, several respected medics had written to the Guardian openly questioning the 'suicide' theory of Kelly's dath. Yet the BBC was silent, as far as I could tell, on anything that might steer debate awayy from the rather silly officially-sanctioned 'corridor' ('debate', as I recall, was almost entirely about whether the BBC had gone too far in its pusuit of Dr Kelly!)

The BBC itself was a key 'victim' of this narrowing of public debate. Yet it chose to participate, cop a (virtual) caning, and actually lead the farce. The take-home messages of Hutton, for the credulous, were (i) the BBC is a fearless truth-seeking organization (ii) it sometimes goes too far in its pursuit of truth and (iii) Britain has a great political system with checks and balances.

I wish.

Like the 'security services', the BBC has clearly strayed so far from public accountability that it needs root and brqnch referom, if not abolition.

I watch its appallingly biased 24x7 global 'service' by satellite here in Australia; ads for Fox are embedded in its programming (they'd never get a licence fee out of us lot!).

I describe the BBC as 'Zionist-lite', to distinguish it from Fox and other 'full strength' distortions of reality.

That's not to say it hasn't sported some very fine reporters. But the best don't seem to work there anymore.

Edited March 2, 2007 by Sid Walker

[John Geraghty]

Retracted due to change of heart.

John

Edited March 3, 2007 by John Geraghty

[Guest Gary Loughran]

Until the last 3 sentences, I think Sid has pretty much nailed the contemporaneous views held by many.

Is the BBC part of Operation Mockingbird, or did it influence it?

[John Simkin]

Norman Baker's book, "The Strange Death of David Kelly" has recently been published. Several members of the forum, including myself, helped him with his research. This includes this quotation on page 301; "John Simkin also makes the Machiavellian suggestion that the pressure could have been maintained by a threat to Blair from the Americans to leak death information about the death in a way that would have implicated the British government if Blair failed to follow the Bush line on the so-called "war on terror".

Norman has agreed to join the forum in order to answer questions on his book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Strange-Death-Davi...1376&sr=1-1

[Norman Baker]

(1) My first question concerns the very unfair review your book received in the Guardian. The review is only six paragraphs long. He spends two of these on David Chidgey’s question to David Kelly when he appeared before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He attacks you for “passing over this” in your book, implying the reason for this is that Chidgey is a Liberal Democrat MP.

After this poor attempt to discredit you he finishes the review with the absurd statement: “There is no evidence supporting the many theories that Kelly was murdered and plenty of evidence supporting the conclusion that he was driven to suicide”. How could he say such a thing after reading your book?

Despite it being a “liberal” newspaper the Guardian has a long record of being hostile to “conspiracy theories”. For example, over the past few years they have given good reviews to anti-conspiracy television programmes yet ridicule or ignore books or programmes that imply that the intelligence services have been involved in illegal acts.

Do you know why the Guardian takes this approach to political conspiracies?

Yes I agree it was a very unfair review. I would have expected better from Richard Norton-Taylor. I wonder in fact if he HAS read it. Interestingly, I have found the reaction to the book to be dependant on the pre-conceived views people already had. Those who already thought there was something suspicious have been very supportive, and those who didn't have been unremittingly hostile. About the only balanced review has been Nick Rufford in the Sunday Times who, while he didn't agree with my conclusion, acknowledged the work I had done and the holes I had found.

The other broad response feature has been, to my surprise, that what might loosely be called the right-wing press has been much more sympathetic than the left-wing press.

As for the Guardian itself, I don't know. Perhaps you could ask Mr Norton-Taylor.

[Norman Baker]

(1) My first question concerns the very unfair review your book received in the Guardian. The review is only six paragraphs long. He spends two of these on David Chidgey’s question to David Kelly when he appeared before the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. He attacks you for “passing over this” in your book, implying the reason for this is that Chidgey is a Liberal Democrat MP.

After this poor attempt to discredit you he finishes the review with the absurd statement: “There is no evidence supporting the many theories that Kelly was murdered and plenty of evidence supporting the conclusion that he was driven to suicide”. How could he say such a thing after reading your book?

Despite it being a “liberal” newspaper the Guardian has a long record of being hostile to “conspiracy theories”. For example, over the past few years they have given good reviews to anti-conspiracy television programmes yet ridicule or ignore books or programmes that imply that the intelligence services have been involved in illegal acts.

Do you know why the Guardian takes this approach to political conspiracies?

(2) In chapter 18 you consider the possibility that US intelligence might have been involved in Kelly’s death. You point out that in July 2003 Kelly made statements that undermined the case for the invasion of Iraq. You quote Joseph Wilson, the husband of Valerie Plame, as saying: “I received several calls from friends wondering, first, whether it had been a suicide; and if not, was I watching my own security? I too wondered about Kelly’s death… I was horrified that I could actually harbour suspicions… that a democratic government might actually do bodily harm to a political opponent.” (page 298) You also refer to Tom Mangold’s claim that members of the CIA were present at the scene of Kelly’s death.

It is clear that the public have difficulty grasping the concept that a democratically elected government would give the go-ahead for a political assassination. It is of course very difficult to obtain evidence that these agents are working on the orders of presidents and prime ministers. In fact, this evidence does not exist because of something called “plausible denial”. It is a bit like Henry II’s role in the death of Thomas Becket. The people responsible soon get the message. At one time the CIA used to carry out its own assassinations. However, since the 1960s they have used contract workers who cannot be traced back to the CIA let alone the president. At first, these assassinations were fairly crude affairs, for example, the failed attempts to kill Castro. This is no longer the case. Therefore the presence of the CIA at the scene of the death suggests that they were not involved in his death.

However, it could be argued, that the killing of Kelly was used as a warning to others who might be considering releasing information that would undermine the invasion of Iraq. This could also explain why the “suicide” of Kelly was so badly done. It would have been possible to have killed Kelly to make it look like a death by natural causes. It is clear to anyone who studies the evidence in this case that Kelly was murdered. Yet, it was not in the interests of Tony Blair that Kelly died. He had already provided the information that undermined the invasion of Iraq. His death only drew more attention to what had been going on and Blair was forced to organize a cover-up of the killing. This was the perfect warning to those who also had damaging information. “We will kill you and we will get away with it”. That is a terrifying message for anyone to receive. It would not surprise me if Peter Watt, Jon Mendelsohn and David Abrahams are not all spending sometime thinking about the death of David Kelly at the moment.

I'm not sure whether you've got to the relevant section yet, but I do advance the theory that the killing was badly handled pour encourager les autres, though in the end I don't think it was this, for the reasons I give. I quote Wouter Basson in this context, I think.

[John Simkin]

I think you have proven conclusively that David Kelly was murdered. The medical evidence provided by David Halpin (specialist in trauma and orthopaedic surgery), C Stephen Frost (specialist in diagnostic radiology), Searle Sennett (specialist in anaesthesiology) Andrew Rouse (public health consultant), Peter Fletcher (specialist in pathology), Martin Birnstingl (specialist in vascular surgery), in their letters to the Guardian is pretty conclusive. The evidence that you discovered in October 2007, through the Freedom of Information request that the knife that Kelly allegedly committed suicide with had no fingerprints on it, also adds support for your theory.

I also believe your examination of Kelly’s behaviour on the day he died shows he was not about to commit suicide.

I suppose every person under stress considers the possibility of suicide. It is usually rejected because the person concerned does not want to cause suffering to their loved ones. Committing suicide is always a very selfish act. This is not my view of Kelly. I find it impossible to believe that he would have caused this level of suffering, especially to his wife and daughters.

The problem I have with the case concerns motive. While writing the book you received information suggesting a whole range of different organizations was responsible for Kelly’s death. This includes information that Operation Mason (the investigation into Dr Kelly’s death) began half an hour before Kelly went for his final walk. You conclude from that information that Thames Valley Police was told by someone that there was a plan to assassinate Kelly. You consider the various possibilities of who could have been involved, before concluding with the most likely scenario, that Kelly was murdered by Iraqi agents. I have problems with this theory. If the agents of Saddam Hussein wanted to kill someone, I would have thought they had better and more high-profile targets to go after. Also, why would the UK authorities have been willing to go along with disguising this murder? In my view, Kelly’s death is very much like the assassination of JFK. It is necessary to concentrate on the people who carried out the cover-up. From the telephone tapes of Lyndon Johnson, it seems he organized the cover-up to avoid a nuclear war (Johnson believed the assassination had been carried out by agents working for Fidel Castro.) What motive did the UK government, MI5/MI6, Thames Valley Police, etc. have for covering up the murder of Dr. David Kelly?

[John Wilson]

On 18th July 2003 Dr. David Kelly was found dead on a wooded hillside near his Oxfordshire home.

He had apparently wandered off in despair, alone, then committed suicide by cutting his own wrists, before a national scandal exposed him as a xxxx.

As a weapon's scientist and Government adviser, Kelly had highest-level security clearance to brief Political VIP's and Intelligence and Military chiefs on various related matters regarding foreign weapon's matters.

The British Government seemed all-out determined to go to war in Iraq alongside the US (oil?), basing it's case on lies, or misplaced information.

The now-infamous "45 minute warning" of a chemical attack capability of Saddam to even strike the UK came from a dubious single source.

Thrashing against our legal system to force it's case for War, the Govt used downright bogus material, and forged documents were used behind the theory that Saddam was shopping for Yellowcake Uranium in Niger.

It turned out to be merely trailers for Hydrogen-filled balloons, part of an artillery system sold to Saddam in the 80's by....the British Govt!

One of Kelly's most recent cases had been the discovery, whilst working in Iraq in 1995, of Saddam's dirty bomb. Kelly found the site where Saddam had tested the bomb in 1987, and radiologically-contaminated dust had spread across the desert.

Why then was this crucial evidence omitted from the UK Govt's weapons dossier?

Surely the British Govt didn't actually help Saddam develop this bomb, whilst our 'ally' in the 80's, when MP's were illegally selling arms to Iraq in breach of sanctions??

Many inconsistencies, flying in the face of the subsequent £1.7m Hutton enquiry, are;-

• Several doctor's wrote to a newspaper to take issue with the official explanation of how Kelly died. One was John Scurr, expert in vascular surgery, who stated that he "didn't believe that simply cutting an ulnar artery would cause death"
  
• The first Paramedics to reach Kelly's body did not believe that the small amount of blood at the scene would have led to his death.
  
• The pathologist who pronounced Kelly dead, later had a change of heart.
  
• Thames Valley Police, conducting the investigation into Kelly's death, couldn't find any fingerprints on the alledged suicide knife, nor on a nearby water bottle deemed to have been used by the Doctor.
  
• The Police retrospectively altered their reasons for actually beginning an investigation 9hrs before Kelly was even reported missing.
  

Could Kelly have been killed (clumsily) by Govt-hired assassins? With the collusion of the Police, Coroners, Intelligence Services members and perhaps even senior MP's?

Does our Govt even have people assassinated, as the Russian Govt still clearly does, despite Stella Remington (former MI5 Chief) swearing that that organisation had never done so?

On the morning of June 17th, Kelly had received a number of calls from the MoD that unsettled him. Only 10days before, those same MoD bosses had promised that he wouldn't be held to account over his contact with journalists, but that if it ever came to light this may change.

Since then, Kelly had given evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee, trying to balance honesty with an attempt not to incriminate himself. But a transcript was read out of an interview between Kelly and a BBC journalist, although he himself did not know exactly to what extent.

Kelly denied speaking in the interview, misleading the Parliamentary Committee.

During those July 17th 'phone calls from the MoD, Kelly was asked again about the interview with the BBC, and now he realised that his careful attempt to step through a minefield had blown-up in his face. Most importantly for this usually honest and quiet man of integrity, he would be exposed as a xxxx, something which friends say cut across his grain.

It is this which the officials say Kelly killed himself over, despite close friends and family of the man say he was cheerful and never would have committed suicide, no matter what adversity he was facing personally or professionally.

Whilst the Government's Hutton enquiry hounded the BBC's Greg Dyke and Andrew Gilligan out of their jobs (despite themselves still owing the country explanations on many unanswered points)- the protagonists are still in office-

• John Scarlett, Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee was promoted to Chief of MI6
  
• Geoff Hoon became Chief Whip
  
• Jack Straw became Justice Cecretary and Lord Chancellor
  
• Tony Blair- most ironically, seeing as he took us to War (illegally under Int. Law)- became a Peace Envoy!
  

[John Simkin]

Norman Baker discusses his book on David Kelly here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=11738

You can find a detailed discussion of the case here:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=3495

[John Wilson]

Thanks John,

I obviously didn't search well enough so as not to repost!

[John Wilson]

Interesting information, clearly murder as i also suspected at the time, more so in retrospect.

I've never had any doubt that our "establishment" is as sinister as the USA's, the old Soviet Union or the former S.Africa? But keep on feeding the lazy populus X-Factor, hols in the sun and rabid scaremongering yarns about immigration, and "we'll be alright"?

What was it the Queen herself said (after the 'bugging' of Buckingham Palace)?

"There are forces at work of which we know nothing?" Hmm.

[Evan Burton]

I'll combine the threads so as not to lose any posts.

[John Wilson]

I'll combine the threads so as not to lose any posts.

Thanks, Evan!

Before I post a new thread in future I'll use the 'search' facility!